m-findlow.livejournal.com

Title: Surrounded
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Characters: Jon Snow
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,078 words
Content notes: I don't own them, they belong to George Martin.
Author notes: Written for Challenge 189 - Amnesty and Challenge 92 - Enemies
Summary: Jon finds himself surrounded on all flanks.

'You have so many enemies,' Melissandre purred. 'Shall I tell you their names?'

'I know their names,' Jon replied.

He watched as the red woman floated away like an ephemeral spirit, her words echoing in his head. "You know nothing, Jon Snow." The same words Ygritte had told him thrice a hundred times. He feared what plans she had for him, knowing that she wielded people for Stannis, that way a smith wielded tools to forge steel. There was much he didn't know, and more he didn't yet know he didn't know, but it served no purpose for Stannis and his red woman to know that. Enough that half his men still wondered.

When he'd first left Winterfell he hadn't know the meaning of having enemies, but now they hounded him at every turn.

Lions and Lannisters swarmed all of Westeros. Though Lord Tywin was dead, the Lannisters still held the throne and much of Westeros, aligned with Highgarden and now dominion over the Riverlands, thanks to alliance with the Freys. They may have been despised by Dorne, but Doran Martell refused to engage them, keeping his Sand Snakes locked away, giving Lannister power sway over all of the South. Jon had to set aside his own feelings. The Night's Watch could not align themselves with any house, not even House Baratheon, whose king currently resided within their keep. Would that he could have swept away the filth of Lannisters, who had taken his Lord father's head, taken his sisters hostage and brought war to the North.

He'd had no love for Greyjoys either. Theon had been his father's ward, last living son of Balon Greyjoy, but still just a boy when he'd been taken from the Iron Isles. He hadn't had a chance to sup on his father's glory and might, yet he still believed himself better than Jon, and more a brother to Robb than he. Somewhere along the way, his taste for iron had grown, and he'd returned to Winterfell to take it on the name of the Ironborn, raping and pillaging, killing the folk they'd both grown up with, whom they'd counted as friends, burning Jon's home to the ground, and taking the life of his half brothers Bran and Rickon. All word of Theon had since faded, as had the Ironborn, retreating back to their stony isles, yet their leader was not amongst them. A new war raged between the Greyjoys of his father's generation for the power of the Seastone Chair. Whosoever of them gained that power would not trouble the North again for now, but Theon, should he still live, would find no mercy should his path take him as far as the Wall.

The Freys were equal parts complicit in the downfall of Winterfell, and news of the Red Wedding had reached far and wide, the Young Wolf King, Jon's last remaining brother, slain despite being granted guest rights under their roof. Old Walder Frey, who changed allegiances as oft as some men changed their smallclothes, and who now held a stranglehold between North and South, preventing Southron forces from joining bannermen in the North. Bolton now held the North, and the allegiance to Northmen was tenuous as best. Roose Bolton had claimed ward of all of the North, but in whose name he held it was uncertain. If he held it for any surviving Stark, he wasn't showing his hand.  

Free folk were on the cusp of encroaching on the Northern lands. Though the Night's Watch held title over the Gift, there was no telling what might happen when Free Folk took to the south. There was no certainty that they would uphold the laws of the King, and had gone so far as to say so outright. But it wasn't the Free Folk south of  the Wall that concerned him. It was those still north of the Wall, who refused to bow and accept the gift Stannis had granted then. Amongst them would be Tormund Giantsbane, preparing to exact his revenge on Jon Snow for his betrayal of the Wildlings, and the Thenns held no love for him, even when he'd been a Wildling himself. Thenns hated all Crows, but none more so that their new Lord Commander. Turn his back on the Wall for even a moment, and he'd find a Thenn arrow in his chest.

Even within the safety of Castle Black, Jon could sense the growing rift of discontent. Janos Slynt would make his life difficult so long as he remained here. The disgraced Goldcloak had many friends, and many still who had voted against Jon's appointment as Lord Commander. If he couldn't win Slynt's favour, many more men would die on the Wall until he could bring them all under one command and one purpose. Perhaps a posting elsewhere might stop the whispers, but where? He had too few outposts, and too few men to rebuild them, let alone man them. Still, he needed Slynt gone. Somewhere where he couldn't plot with Ser Alliser, who didn't think Jon fit even to polish a blind man's boots. Ser Alliser could be troublesome, but Jon wasn't afraid of him. Alliser Thorne didn't have the stomach to attack Jon outright. Slynt's men however...

More pressing was the tenuous hold he had of the Wall itself. On all fronts he felt backed into a corner, trapped between two Kings, each who had a claim to the Iron Throne. One a mere boy, his kingdom run from behind his mother's skirts; the other a king made of stone and treating with fire. Stannis would ask much of him, and had, but he couldn't give him the Wall, or the North.

Add to that rumours of a Targaryen girl across the Narrow Sea, armed with dragons and an army of tens of thousands. What would happen if she struck westward? Whilst Westeros battled for its rightful king, no aid would come to the Wall, no matter how many ravens he sent.  

His greatest enemy was time. Time to put king's blood out of the reach of the Lady Melissandre; time to make Sam the Maester he needed; time to fortify the Wall against the White Walkers and rebuild the Watch that had held it for eight thousand years. Winter was coming and they were far from ready.

Yes, he knew his enemies, their names and their sigils, but how many more were yet still waiting for him in the shadows?